ShoeGaze

@Robert Lunte Wow, I completely uploaded the wrong song. I was a bit out of it, but here you go. Sorry about that, thanks! You gave me pointers and some advice on the earlier version of this song I posted, was a bit boring before.

Hi all. I took your advice from the last time I posted this song and made some improvements. As far as vocals go, I tried out your guys' suggestion and screamed/yelled the final chorus (Sounds like I summoned my inner Kurt Cobain) I've never screamed/yelled while I sang before, so it wasn't easy and took a few takes until I was semi-satisfied with the performance. Any tips on how I could improve that and make it sound even better? Also, the song in general is more dynamic as the previous review stated that the song just was lacking change and excitement, so I added louder and more distorted guitar parts, crashing cymbals, drum fills, drum drop outs at the bridge, etc. Just in general touched it up and improved it on a second run through making the song more aggressive to better reflect my bands' more raw and heavier live sound. If it can be improved further, let me know! Cheers!

Is the gothic thing bad? This is the kind of music that comes out when I write, can't control it. Sucks cause I don't even listen to goth at all :/ Oh I did sing louder and higher, second part of chorus and end of chorus. Did you mean like that or different

Hi all, So yeah, I wrote a new song. Been very creative lately. Anyway, this one is very personal to me and wasn't easy to write but I needed to finally do it, it's about losing someone I loved tremendously to drug addiction, severe depression, suicide. This is my way of coping with it. I haven't talked about it since to anyone, I almost couldn't even finish the song and literally cried after I finished it. I'm so happy I was able to do this and do this song. Since this song is very special and emotional to me, I'm REALLY trying to capture the emotions through my singing, and let the listener feel what I'm feeling through emotion and lyrics combined with the music. One thing I'm doing that I've never done before is yell singing? I don't know what to call it, I usually sing very subdued as you can tell from my earlier stuff, but the chorus line "I watched as you slowly blew away, I watch you, as you just drift away" was the most important to me, so I layered it with singing louder, and at the last chorus I full on yelled almost all vocal takes. I REALLY wanted to capture something emotional, raw, where you could hear either the pain, anger, or something in that yell but I don't think I nailed it. Please tell me how I could improve that yell at the end, and if any other parts of the singing are off or not "feeling" right for what this song means. Thanks guys/girls.

Nice band! I've heard of them but never listened to them, way before my time :3 I live in a musical bubble, mostly listen to underground indie shoegaze and lo-fi music. I'm a little worried now about the gothic vibe lol this band DIIV is my favorite band of all time and is basically the band that inspired me to start writing music last year and start a band, I've seen them live countless times and thought (hoping) to attract the same crowd.

Hi Robert, thank you for the review and the welcome! I have no idea what a vocal fry is, i'll look into this. Had no idea about the gothic vibe, that's odd i'm about the most hipster guy you'd ever wanna meet, typical dirty Echo Park hipster with blue hair. Definitely have never listened to goth before! Interesting. I'll play around with some vocal stuff where you suggested and will check out the lesson package you provided. I am a bit poor as of right now, living that starving artist's life but I'll see what I can do!

Hi! Here's another song, my most recent that I wrote a couple of days ago. Same vocal concerns that I posted in my previous recent thread for the song: (All The Good Things) that post explains in more detail my concerns and everything, basically just concerned about the vocals because I'm a new singer and a new songwriter. Any thoughts / tips / criticism / advice / or anything you'd like to add would be highly appreciated! The song gets a bit repetitive after the bridge, I wrote the song in about 3-4 hours and just got lazy and impatient. Definitely going to change the bridge to add variety/dynamics.

Hey hey! New song I finished two weeks ago or so. So, from the start let me say that I'm not a typical singer that I think frequents the forums, in other words I'm really not much of a traditional singer at all and I suck lol. I'd perform absolutely awful singing to pop songs or others where there is a huge amount of skill and years of training involved and required. I'm not a trained singer at all, I just wing it and hope for the best. Ok, so with that said: a few friends have said I have a weird voice and way of singing, just something that's a bit different I suppose. I'm very self conscious about it especially when I hear other singers in alt rock/shoegaze bands. When I hear my singing in comparison I'm like "Oh, that's awkward sounding, sounds like sh*t", yet singing like this is very natural for me, nothing forced (I've tried singing differently and it just feels like I'm trying to do voice acting/karaoke or something). I don't really have any singers that I look up to or have influences, just doing my own thing which makes me feel more isolated and unsure. I'm concerned with making sure the vocals are up to par since i'm stuck with em, that they are interesting, "good" (relative term, I know :p), and most importantly that they at least stand out somewhat in a musically pleasing way. Any thoughts / advice / tips / suggestions / or general comments are totally welcome, good or bad. Not really much vocal effects used other than compression and very light reverb on one vocal track or two. No EQing or anything else, I just try to make sure the recording sits in the mix when I first capture it that way I don't need to mix/process later, because I know nothing about mixing and processing especially something as complex and dynamic as vocals. Cheers!

Awesome, maybe i'll do training at some point, or just check out youtube videos. As far as my voice is right now though, is it alright? The reason why i'm concerned is because I plan on releasing a demo, and also getting the band to start gigging in a month or two. They like the vocals, but I just want outside opinions if my voice sucks or not, or any thoughts on it for the kind of music I play. When I listen to my voice I cringe and hate it. Maybe I sing in key, but that doesn't mean it necessarily sounds good I suppose. Bleh

Hi all, New singer/songwriter, just recently formed an indie/shoegaze band from all of my home recordings. No vocal training or anything, but then again I don't care too much if I sound trained as a "singer" would sound on the radio, and instead i'm focusing on whether or not I sound pleasing to the ears, basically want to make sure I don't sound like complete crap because I have a very weird voice. Here's a vocal cover I did of Marilyn Manson - Coma Black (I know, definitely NOT my genre and I'm not a Manson fan, but a friend said my singing sort of sounded like Manson which surprised me because I thought he was a heavy metal screaming dude, so I youtubed him and gave it a shot the other day to demonstrate my vocal style. All tracks done in one take, no copy/pasting so that I can get an accurate critique on my singing without cheating so that mistakes were captured.